Jana Kramer Has Regrets About Her Relationship With Brantley Gilbert: ‘I Wasn’t the Best Version of Myself’

In 2012, singer and actor Jana Kramer met country artist Brantley Gilbert at June's CMT Music Awards, and they hit it off. The two quickly began dating and were engaged about six months later, in late January of 2013 — but their relationship ended that August, when they called off their plans to marry.

Now, both Kramer and Gilbert are married to other people — her to former NFL player Michael Caussin, him to his hometown sweetheart Amber Cochran — but in a new episode of her podcast, Kramer admits that if she were to text an ex one last time, she'd be sending the message to Gilbert. It seems she has some regrets about the way things went down in that relationship.

"I'm really sorry for the person that I was," Kramer admits, "and the way that I wasn't healthy enough to be in that relationship."

The conversation came up during the April 19 episode of her podcast, Whine Down With Jana Kramer and Michael Caussin, in which the couple discusses a USA Today story about texting exes one final time "just in case you have one more thing you wanted to get off your chest," Kramer summarizes.

Caussin thinks it's a bad idea — you're either texting them something pointless, or to say you miss them, he theorizes — but Kramer timidly brings up Gilbert's name.

"I wasn't the best version of myself in that relationship. I just wasn't," she says, at first being coy about which former relationship she's discussing. "I always have a little bit of regret that I didn't handle things better."

"That's adult and mature of you," Caussin agrees, to which Kramer quickly interjects, "Well, we're not going to reach out to them, because that wouldn't be healthy."

Kramer and Caussin have been married since 2015 and have two children together. The couple has been forthcoming about the issues they've worked through in their relationship, including his infidelity and treatment for sex addiction. They were separated for a time in 2016, but reconciled and renewed their wedding vows at the end of 2017.

Gilbert and Cochran, meanwhile, have also been married since 2015, and they, too, have two children together. Gilbert admitted in 2014 that while he still thought the world of Kramer, "[w]e went for broke, man. We went hard, we went fast ..."